Wireless Inspiron 6400 anyone?

[Patrick Bowen]

Lane wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've a new inspiron 6400 running FreeBSD 6.1 and I can't get Wireless to work.  
> It works on WXP using the Dell WLAN drivers at 
> http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R115321.EXE
>
> I've followed the instructions at 
> http://dannyman.toldme.com/2005/01/05/freebsd-howto-ndisulate-windows-drivers/
> but no ndis driver shows up after kldload if_ndis.  
>
> ifconfig -a looks like:
>
> bfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>         options=8<VLAN_MTU>
>         inet6 fe80::215:c5ff:feb8:39e%bfe0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
>         inet 172.16.1.42 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.1.255
>         ether 00:15:c5:b8:03:9e
>         media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
>         status: active
> fwe0: flags=108943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,NEEDSGIANT> 
> mtu 1500
>         options=8<VLAN_MTU>
>         inet6 fe80::304f:c0ff:fe9c:7541%fwe0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
>         inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0xff000000 broadcast 255.255.255.255
>         ether 32:4f:c0:9c:75:41
>         ch 1 dma 0
> lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
>         inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
>         inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
>         inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
>
> It seems as if the fwe0 devices wants to be the wireless, as the bfe0 driver 
> is my "wired" ethernet card.
>   
...snip...
> Any help is appreciated.
>
> lane
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>   

Lane;

When I did the same thing for a Broadcom wireless card the resulting 
loadable module was named "bcmwl5_sys". Did you end up with something 
appropriate to your .sys and .inf files?

Also, the .sys and .inf files that came on the disk that came with the 
card either wouldn't work with ndisgen, or gave a file that didn't work 
with the card. I ended up using the .sys and .inf files from the Dell 
website that were reference in another ndis article.

Good Luck.

Patrick